


Dontcha Know? It Kills You.

by Japo_Chan23



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Angst, Cigarettes, Marijuana, Minor in possession, One-Sided Attraction, Smoking, Underage Drinking, Unrequited Crush, Weed, but not really, pot, whatever you kids call weed nowadays lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 13:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14333802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Japo_Chan23/pseuds/Japo_Chan23
Summary: Jared ended up disposing of the cigarette that Evan touched, leaving him with one left.It hung over him like a death sentence (with the cliche similes again).In actuality, it hung over him like a death sentence hung over someone suicidal. It was welcomed, but still dreadful.





	Dontcha Know? It Kills You.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this late at night, while very exhausted. A long time ago. 
> 
> This is also posted on the deh amino. No one is surprised.

Jared never actually enjoyed smoking. It happened, sometimes. He smoked weed. And he stole cigarettes from his grandfather whenever he visited, or just took a cigarette from some punk at school in the stairwell.    
  
Turkish Gold was what he preferred, Menthols were what he typically got from everyone.    
  
He didn't actually have a preference, but the people closest to him normally got Turkish Gold. The camel in the desert, all the yellow, it was familiar and he associated it with his father a majority of the time. Jared didn't like the dark green of a Menthols pack. He associated green with nature, peace, Evan, stuff and people like that.    
  
The pack of Menthols were anything but, really.    
  
The first time he smoked a cigarette he was in the bathroom in his house. It was one in the morning, the ventilation was on, and a majority of his family went to bed already. He was impatient, couldn't wait for his father to go to bed. So, on impulse, he took one of three cigarettes hidden underneath his blanket, and marched right into the bathroom. Green lighter in hand and all. The weight of the world on his shoulders, his thoughts like a hurricane, quick and dangerous. Jared scoffed internally.    
  
The stress of doing something like this has demoted his creative nature to cliche similes and metaphors. Ridiculous, but he wasn't going to linger on it.    
  
Jared vaguely remembered how it went. Seated on the toilet seat, beneath the vent, legs spread and elbows pressed roughly into the skin of his thighs.   
  
The lighter and cigarette weighed his hands down. Wasn't heavy at all, not even a pound, but the pressure of what he was about to do seemed to have enough weight to cause him to droop down.    
  
"Fuck it," Jared mumbled, placing the cigarette in between his lips. He wasn't an amateur, he knew what he was doing, for the most part. He rubbed his thumb of the top, before flicking the lighter on. He used it too much, the flame weak, small and docile. The oil was running out. Sighing, he brought lighter up to the cigarette.    
  
The lighter ended up back in his pocket, and the lighter was in between his middle and pointer finger of his left hand, said hand pressed against his mouth roughly.    
  
'Come on Kleinman, you've second-hand smoked hundreds of times, go through with it, pussy,' he thought, aggressive yet tame.    
  
Breathing in, Jared immediately started coughing. It was terrible, it tasted disgusting. He saw the smoke come out of his mouth, dispersing quickly in the air as he coughed. The moment the smoke went into his lungs, he actually realized how terrible it really was.   
  
The smoke itself should've been enough to make a smoker quit.    
  
The nicotine though, is why Jared continued.   
  
Inhaling the smoke and blowing it up towards the ceiling in a fruitless attempt at having it go away faster. At one point he stopped caring and just hunched over himself, watching smoke rise from the cigarette before he burned it out.   
  
He remembered wrapping it in toilet paper. He had sisters, so it would blend in.    
  
Later that night, Jared ended up stealing a bottle of Hennessy, and proceed to take two shots of it. Not enough to get buzzed, he duly noted. He realized that his tolerance to alcohol built up ever since the first time he drank, back in seventh grade. Got buzzed after two shots. Now he didn't even feel a thing.   
  
Aside from that, his younger sister was talking their older sister, openly at the kitchen table.   
  
"The bathroom smells like cigarettes."   
  
Jared considered blaming the grandfather, and he would've if questioned about it, or asked about it.   
  
He ended up storing the rest of the cigarettes in an old, empty glasses case, and the bottle of Hennessy was placed underneath his bed.    
  
He took a shot that morning, before school. He considered going to school drunk, but decided against it. Jared also didn't take a cigarette to school to smoke during lunch, outside. He convinced himself he was doing it for attention.   
  
Attention whore was what he was, but he told himself that he didn't need anyone's attention to be fine.    
  
When Evan found the cigarettes, he frowned disapprovingly at Jared. Fiddled with it. Poked at it. Asked to try it.   
  
Jared frowned, and just told Evan that getting high was better than smoking a cigarette. They proceeded to get high that night.   
  
They don't talk about it, but Jared enjoyed snogging Evan. He would've preferred a shag, but he got what he got, and it was wonderful.    
  
Jared ended up disposing of the cigarette that Evan touched, leaving him with one left.   
  
It hung over him like a death sentence (with the cliche similes again).    
  
In actuality, it hung over him like a death sentence hung over someone suicidal. It was welcomed, but still dreadful.    
  
There was this one time Evan was writing something, and had asked for Jared's opinion on it. Of course there was smoke mentioned.   
  
The way Evan described smoke was typical. Like how fanfiction writers described it. Like they never seen someone smoke before, and clearly haven't smoked themselves.    
  
The way that Evan had described it was simple. It was aimed to be artsy, beautiful somehow. Wisps of smoking wishing steadily above, twisting and curling around thy head before dissipating or whatever the fuck. Smoke softly rising. Wrapping loosely around you.    
  
Jared had circled that entire section, and wrote "see back" in the margins, before proceeding to describe how smoke from a cigarette actually was like. Not this fanfiction, fetishized version of it.    
  
He thinks about what he wrote a lot.   
  
The disappointing thing is, smoke doesn't float around you in whisks and curls above your head like a halo. Contrary to popular belief. The smoke was just that, smoke. It assaults your senses, making you believe you are smelling something sweet whereas it is the most disgusting thing you could ever smell on the outside, your lungs feeling worse than they did when all you did was breath it in because of your father. The smoke doesn't go above your head, but instead wraps itself tightly around your neck as it tells you soft whispers of comfort and nothing, until you pass out from asphyxiation.    
  
His throat never felt clear, ever. Always felt clogged up with mucus.    
  
People always told him that smoking was going to kill him, that it was bad, and he couldn't argue. They were right.    
  
Smoking was going to be the death of many others, but Jared wasn't going to continue smoking. He knew for a fact though, that this wasn't going to be the cause of his death. Worsening his body, yes, but not the reason for its perishment.    
  
He couldn't decide what the greater punishment of the two was.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this when I was going through shit. I was projecting hella bad for the most part. Most everything I wrote here I did, so yikes.
> 
> Jared isn't even my favorite character, but he's easy to project my shit onto because he's a shitty person, like me. 
> 
> :)


End file.
